ログインThe garden was a ruin, and it was the most beautiful thing Evren had ever seen.There were stone walls on every side, lower than he’d expected, but close enough that the winter sun poured in and pooled on the ground.Paths of broken flagstone ran between squares of earth, and in every square was a bed. Some had been swallowed by weeds, which were now cleared out but others, to his surprise, had held on.Silver-leafed plants grew low to the ground and tall brown stalks stood at the edges like old men. His mother had named half of these plants to him once, bent over a chipped clay pot in their hut that smelled of smoke and sickness. Plants for fever, for burns, for sleep. And a few others he knew better than to touch without care.In the far corner was a stone bench beneath a dead apple tree, and a single pale blossom still clung to one of the branches, out of season and ridiculous.Evren sat down on the bench and put his face in his hands.He had cried so much in the past weeks that he
The first thing Evren noticed the moment he stepped out of his room a few days later was the absence of guards. He paused for a moment looking down the hallway and back at his door.The guards were gone. The two men who had stood in front of his door for the better part of a month, neither of them ever meeting his eyes and never speaking unless spoken to, were nowhere to be seen now.The Lycan King had come to fetch Evren himself, for whatever reasons; the omega didn’t know. But for some reason, Evren didn’t trust the emptiness in the hallway. He knew that just because he couldn’t see the guards didn’t mean they weren’t lurking in the shadows and as far as Evren was concerned that only made them harder to evade.“Come with me,” Lachlan said. “There’s something I want to show you.”Evren hesitated a heartbeat before nodding. Evren raised a brow as Lachlan held out his hand, palm up and waited. The omega put his hand in the king’s waiting palm, his brows furrowing as they walked out of
The Alpha Enforcer of Tyrheim stood in front of Lachlan's desk with his hands clasped behind his back, and a muscle ticking in his jaw.“The quartermaster is dead, Your Majesty.” He delivered the news like a sharp blade cutting through meat. Malaki was not a man who lingered over bad news, and he knew stalling wouldn’t grant him any favour with the Lycan King either.“How?” Lachlan asked without looking away from the spread of reports on his desk. That was the only information he had managed to get out of the prisoner he’d brought back to the palace before the prisoner died.“He was found in his bed yesterday. The garrison physician says a cough went to rot in his lungs.” Malaki’s mouth thinned as he spoke. “His household claimed he wasn’t in perfect health the week before. I had two of my men watching his movements prior to his death and there was no report of an ailment.”Lachlan leaned back in his chair, his fingers slowly tapping on the table. “So, someone killed him,” Lachlan mut
Lachlan had walked into that room with a dozen questions lined up in his mind, every one of them a variation of what are you hiding from me, and every one of them fell away the moment the Omega collapsed into his arms.He simply tightened his hold, one hand spread between Evren’s shoulder blades, the other cradling the back of his head as the Omega cried into his chest.The way Evren’s fingers had twisted into the back of his shirt when the Omega said, “I missed you.” Lachlan believed him for the most part, because Evren held him as if he was afraid the Alpha might dissolve if he let go. But there was something else threaded through it, something Lachlan felt through the resonance humming between them that neither of them could see. He had only been gone this morning, and Evren saying he missed him felt amiss given how closed off the Omega had been in the past weeks.‘This sorrow,’ Sirius murmured, stirring behind Lachlan’s mind. ‘This isn’t longing. There is something, but it isn’t
By the time the month turned over, there were two guardsmen posted outside Evren's door instead of one, and neither of them met his eyes anymore when he passed. It had happened slowly enough that Evren couldn't point to the single day it became a cage rather than a courtesy. At first, an extra attendant was assigned to walk with him to the gardens. Lachlan had said it was because he was worried about Evren's health. The Omega had started looking even more frail. Lachlan had found Evren had been secretly procuring medicine from the Royal physician staff. Still, the Omega never told him what for. Despite wanting to punish the beta Lachlan had learned about, the Lycan King refrained upon finding out they were mostly potions for headaches. As weeks passed, the distance between them grew, and Lachlan became even more possessive. Evren knew the king no longer believed him whenever he claimed he was fine, despite his deteriorating health. Lachlan no longer trusted the Omega’s words and for
By the fifth morning, Lachlan had stopped pretending he hadn't noticed a change in Evren. The change had begun small enough that he could almost talk himself out of it. The omega had refused Lachlan’s offer to get him the royal physician, yet his health hadn’t improved. Somehow Evren lied it away and Lachlan could no longer pretend he didn’t notice. Since his arrival, the Lycan King had tried to set a pattern between them, making sure dinner with the Omega was no longer something that happened on occasion. Lachlan had started making it a habit to wrap up whatever royal business he had before late evening so he could be back in his private palace in time for dinner with Evren. The Lycan King had hoped this would show the omega that he truly cared and that he wanted to make things right between them. The moment they had shared before Lachlan’s trip had been the King deemed special. Yet, ever since returning, it seemed Evren had withdrawn even more, and Lachlan could feel the Omega sl







